


Here is the World

by Tabithian



Series: Light the Path [29]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:05:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4944367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim bites the inside of his cheek at the way Jason stumbles over the name Tim's given them, like he doesn't trust it. (The same way Bruce avoids using it when he can, and Dick - )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here is the World

**Author's Note:**

> Kiragecko asked for Tim going back in time and saving Jason before his death and experiencing what their relationship could have been. 
> 
> ...but then this happened, so...:D?

“Hey.”

Tim looks up to see Jason frowning at him.

“Are you supposed to be moving around?”

Tim's grip on the back of the desk chair tightens, knuckles going white because - 

Nothing in life is ever free, there's always a _price_.

“Alvin?”

Tim bites the inside of his cheek at the way Jason stumbles over the name Tim's given them, like he doesn't trust it. (The same way Bruce avoids using it when he can, and Dick - )

“You don't look so hot.”

Tim sighs, drags the chair around and drops onto it gracelessly.

“You're going to pop your stitches,” Jason says, slowly moving closer, hands shoved in his pockets. “That can't be good for your ribs either, you know?”

Jason grins, bounces on his heels a little and leans in. “Personal experience talking.”

Tim rubs a hand over his face because this - 

“Alvin?”

“Sorry,” Tim says, tries for a smile that never quite makes it. “I'm just tired.”

(It isn't entirely a lie.)

********

_Jason's dead. (Again, the hysterical part of Tim's mind points out.)_

_Jason's dead and Tim's well on his way to joining him, pinned with fire creeping closer smoke heavy in the air, every breath a fight he's quickly losing. He can't even see Jason anymore, and this is going to hurt Bruce, the others so much when they find out, isn't it?_

_Overhead fire races across the rafters, bright and blinding and Tim closes his eyes. Listens to smaller explosions deeper in the warehouse, creaking and groaning as fire eats away at everything in its path._

__Well, now, this is interesting, isn't it? __

_Tim ignores the voice, sharp little spark of cold in his head that shouldn't be there – shouldn't exist – and yet it is, and does._

_It's been there, poking and prodding and lurking over the last week, and nothing, nothing has been able to dislodge it, and Tim had tried._

_Every test and scan he could think of, niggling sense of fear growing each day because this line of work, it's so easy to slip over the line and not notice until it's too late._

_He'd gone to Zatanna, to Jason Blood and neither of them could help, and Tim. (He should have gone to Bruce.)_

__Oh, my, oh, my.

_Tim winces as he feels little spikes of burning cold digging into his thoughts, memories, prying at them indelicately, without care. Looking through them and tossing the ones that don't catch its interest aside like so much garbage._

_He's losing himself with each memory tossed aside, can feel them going cold and dark, breaking apart into jagged little splinters in a dark corner of Tim's mind._

_“_ Stop - _” Tim gets out, struggles to form the word but it goes unheeded, claws pricking and stabbing and_ hurting _._

 __The dead one. He was important? __

_Tim snarls, or tries to, but the air is thinner and all he does is choke on smoke and blood and anger._

__Hmm. __

_The sensation of cold spreads over Tim slow, steady until he can't hear the warehouse burning around him, feel the stifling heat, breath the choking air._

__A regret? _the voice says, and there's no mistaking the curiosity, in it, or the distaste._

_Tim laughs, or would if he still could because that's all he is, isn't he?_

_Regret after regret after regret._

_Points of cold digging here, there, plucking out a memory of a fairy tail someone had told Tim years and years ago held in its claws like a prized treasure._

__A wish then, _the voice says,_ in exchange for your Life _._

_It sounds._

_Excited, delighted._

_Tim -_

__It's a good deal, _the voice says, offended by Tim's silence._ This one is almost at its end, and the wish I would give you is gently used. __

_The voice left behind a fragment when it lifted that last memory, caution, a warning, never trust a fae or its kind. Never enter into bargains -_

_Pain, as the cold flees and time resumes, flames licking at Tim, ceiling beginning to cave in on itself._

__Time is running out, _the voice says._ A wish or nothing _._

_Tim turns his head to the side, sees Jason's body when the fire shifts violently as something collapses, a rush of displaced air._

_There's a harsh shriek of tortured metal, Tim looking up to see the ceiling begin its fall. Embers and sparks spilling down on him._

_Jason's name ghosts across his mind, hears a triumphant_ Finally _as something in his head shatters and everything goes black._

********

Tim wakes up with a scream caught in his throat.

“Jesus, are you okay?”

Tim freezes for a moment before Jason moves into his line of sight.

Slowly, carefully, hands held up palms facing Tim.

“Alvin?”

Tim focuses on getting his breathing under control, aware of Jason watching him.

Worried, concerned. 

“Should I get one of the others?”

Tim shakes his head and bites back a laugh because _no_. 

The last thing he needs is Bruce – this Bruce – coming in to see him like this. Or for Dick, or Alfred to see him like this, because - 

“Okay,” Jason says, and goes back to the chair situated beside Tim's bed. “Do you need anything?”

Tim looks at Jason.

He looks as bad as he claims Tim does, bruised and battered and he looks exhausted.

“Were you watching me sleep?” Tim asks, feels himself smiling at the look on Jason's face.

Color flooding his face, scowl taking form.

“Shut up, I'm not a creep,” Jason says, eye darting away from Tim's. “You just - ”

“Jason.”

Jason sighs, eye snapping back to Tim's face.

“You almost died,” Jason says, low, fierce, for all that he doesn't know Tim. “You got us out of that place and you don't even know me!”

Tim stares at Jason

“Why?”

Jason's so very young, as much a stranger to Tim as Tim is to him.

And yet.

“Would you have left me there?” 

Irritation, annoyance, Jason glaring at him. 

“You know I wouldn't have.”

“Why?”

Jason makes a frustrated noise and throws his hands up because it's such a stupid question, what the hell?

Tim smiles, so, so tired. “Then you know what my answer is.”

********

_Tim opens his eyes to Jason staring at him._

_Jason's covered in blood, and wearing his old Robin suit. He's crouched beside a blonde woman tied to a pillar in a warehouse somewhere._

_Tim_ knows _this._

_“You have to help us!" the woman – Jason's mother – yells, terrified, guilty._

_Tim doesn't stop to ask questions, ignores the woman (Jason's mother) yelling at him as he -_

__There _._

_Joker's bomb, just under a minute left on the timer._

_The door's locked, Tim knows this, can hear Jason's mother trying it anyway, but the bomb._

_“Hey,” Jason's voice, shaky, hollow, barely holding on._

_There's precious little cover here, and Tim_ knows _this._

_He still hands his cape over._

_Jason meets his eyes, and Tim offers him a grim smile and gives him a gentle push, careful of his injuries. “Find some cover.”_

_Jason hesitates, then nods and goes to his mother and Tim turns back to the bomb._

_Tim almost laughs because this._

_Bruce trained him on one just like this._

********

“Do you know the story about the monkey's paw?”

Jason looks up from his homework, frown between his eyes.

“What?”

“It's a short story someone read to me a long time ago,” Tim says.

Fidgets with the bandage on his cheek before lowering his hand at Jason's scowl.

No matter what he says, or tries to do, Jason won't leave. 

Tim's heard him arguing with Bruce, with Dick, and still he won't leave, or let Tim leave, and this.

“You make a wish on the monkey paw,” Tim says, and this is such a horrible explanation, “but it goes wrong. No matter what you wish for, you have to pay a price for it.”

One of his nannies had read that story to him when he was too young to hear it, Tim knows now. He was too young to hear it, but it had always stuck with him along with the fairy tails. Life lessons Tim had learned the hard way.

There's always a price, and it isn't always something you can anticipate. More often than not, it's something you never would have chosen to lose, give up in exchange.

Jason's watching him now, waiting. Unhappy slant to his mouth, shoulders curled in.

“I.” Tim laughs, stares at his hands. 

There are burn scars across the backs of them, a deep gash in his leg that had taken more stitches than he likes to think about to close. The injuries he'd gotten in the first warehouse that couldn't be explained away when Bruce found them, Joker's bomb defused and resting in front of Tim.

He hadn't been aware enough then, to catch it. The subtle nuance.

 _A wish then, in exchange for your Life_.

He hadn't been aware enough then to make a conscious wish, just one last regret spooling out over his mind, that he couldn't save Jason, that Bruce would have to grieve for his son once more.

And that voice – fae or something else – had snatched that thought up and taken it as its own, collected its price from him and granted Tim's wish, or answered his regret, whatever that final thought had been.

Tim can feel it, them, in a dark little corner of his mind. All those memories, experiences, precious, cherished from his previous life broken and scattered, jagged little splinters. (His _Life_.)

Here and now, in this one there's a Jason who doesn't know him and so clearly wants to, out of the gratitude he feels for the person who saved him and his mother. 

It's bittersweet this, seeing the way Jason is like this. The way he's trying, so carefully, to get to know Tim. Be his friend in spite of Bruce's suspicions, Dick's concerns.

There's that too, Bruce and Dick. Alfred, Barbara. 

All the important people in Tim's previous life who look at him like a stranger now, potential threat.

“Alvin?”

Tim looks at Jason, and wonders whose life he traded for his. 

The one Tim had led before that he'd fought so hard to earn, to keep, only for everything to slip through his fingers at the end? The Tim from this - world? time? - living in a cold and empty home chasing his heroes across Gotham's rooftops?

Tim looks at Jason, so young and _alive_ and knows it doesn't matter.

(There's always a price, and someone willing to pay it in the end.)

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. 
> 
> ~Frederick Buechner


End file.
